Meerschaum Store is the first and only
company that produce museum quality
meerschaum collectibles, figurines,
decorative items and smoking pipes and
gives life-time guarantee for meerschaum
in the world. Our every Meerschaum
products are made of first quality
meerschaum and
hand-carved from the finest quality
genuine block Meerschaum,extracted from
mines in
Eskisehir
; Turkey.

As a Pipe:

Simply
put, because it affords a unique smoking
experience. Meerschaum is the most
flavorful and beautiful pipe you can
own.
Acts as a filter, absorbs
tobacco tars and nicotine, and yields a
most satisfying smoke. These
pipes which , when broken in , gradualiy
attain an attractive rich brown tone
,are made from extremely porous blocks
and provide for excellent ,
nicotine-filtered smoking.

Meerschaum smokes cool
and dry with a flavor unrivaled by any
other pipe.

As it ages, meerschaum
colors a rich honey-brown, improving
both in appearance and taste.

Meerschaum Pipes - with
a minimum of proper care - will last for
a lifetime. They will not burn out as
briars do.

As a Decoration
Item:
Unique,
art, precious

Meerschaum - one of the
most porous substances found in nature.

Worldwide beauty and
quality from the mainland of its own art
AnatoliaAll
of our products,processed scalable in
hands by the best artists of World

Satisfaction
GuaranteedLife - time
Guarantee (MeerschaumStore is the
only company that gives life-time
guarantee for meerschaum)

WHAT
IS
MEERSCHAUM *

‘Meerschaum’ is a a German word describing a
soft mineral , which literally means ‘sea foam'.
alluding to the belief that it was the
compressed whitecaps of waves, just as it is
said in mythology for the goddess of beauty -
Aphrodite. It is of an opaque white or cr’am
colour and when first extracted is soft and
easily marked, but it hardens on exporuse to the
sun or when dried in a warm room or in a
furnace. To polish the pipes is very important.
The polish must be good quality.

Most of the Meerschaum for commercial use is
obtained from Asia Minor, chiefly from the
plains of
Eskisehir , Turkey , where it occurs in a
small rounded lumps , in alluvial deposits which
are extensively worked for its extraction. The
extracted lumps are first scraped then dried,
again scraped and then polished with wax. The
rudely shaped Meerschaum is then taken into
workshops, where it is skilfully carved by hand
into beautiful pipes, or turned and carved into
cigarette and cigar holders and articles of
adornment.

Meerschaum is one of the major reasons for the
fame of
Eskisehir. It contains Magnesium(Mg) and
Hydrosilicade in it’s structure. Magnesium
doesn't make it strong and the hydrogen and
oxygen don't make it cool. It is the crystalline
structure; the arrangement of the magnesium,
silicon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms in a rigid
crystalline structure that makes sepiolite (the
clay mineral that is identified by pipe smokers
as meerschaum) so good for smoking.
Eskisehir has the purest and whitest ,most
easy to engrave Meerschaum in the world.
Meerschaum deposits of the highest quality are
found only in one place in the world - in the
small city of
Eskisehir in central Turkey. And here
the deposits are confined to an area of only 4
square miles. It comes in other masses in
various sizes and round. Because it is less
dense that the water, it floats on the water. It
is soft when newly –extracted and feels like
soap but, it hardens overtime. It is also called
‘white gold’ because of it’s colour.

Mined with hand tools, and
by men trained in this singular family
tradition, meerschaum is excavated at depths
ranging from 200 to 300 feet. The miners wash
the raw meerschaum lumps and sort them into 5
categories according to quality. Each of these 5
categories is further divided into 12 qualities
according to size, colour porosity and
homogeneity of the mineral.

Nearly 300 years
ago, the first meerschaum pipe was carved by
hand. And today, these unique pipes are still
carved by hand. The carver, a craftsman of
unique ability and long experience, examines
each piece of meerschaum, calculating the lines
of cleavage along which it should be split. The
split block-meerschaum is soaked in water for
15-30 minutes until the material achieves a
cheese-like consistency. Working with the
softened material, the carver determines the
rough shape of the pipe before the bowl and
draft hole are bored. Like all fine hand-crafted
articles, no two meerschaums are alike. The
carved meerschaum goes into a kiln at high
temperature, a process that removes all moisture
from the mineral. The shank is threaded and
fitted with a stem. After meticulous polishing
with the finest grade abrasives, the meerschaum
is ready for waxing. Though there are many
different wax formulas, beeswax alone yields the
rich colouring associated with the finest
meerschaums. Melted and then bleached, the
beeswax is ready to receive the pipe itself. The
subtle differences in colour and tone among
pipes are intentional, achieved by careful
dipping of the pipes a specific number of times.

WHY BUY MEERSCHAUM? *

Simply put, because it affords a unique smoking
experience. Meerschaum is the most flavourful
and beautiful pipe you can own. Meerschaum - one
of the most porous substances found in nature -
acts as a filter, absorbs tobacco tars and
nicotine, and yields a most satisfying smoke.
Meerschaum smokes cool and dry with a flavour
unrivalled by any other pipe. As it ages,
meerschaum colours a rich honey-brown, improving
both in appearance and taste.

Meerschaum Pipes - with a minimum of proper care
- will last for a lifetime. They will not burn
out as briars do.

A meerschaum is an investment in smoking
pleasure. As beautiful as meerschaum is to the
eye, its true beauty must be experienced. A
meerschaum is made to smoke. Hold it. Enjoy its
light weight and silky feel, its distinctive
taste, its ripening to a mellow golden-brown.
Justly deserving its reputation as the
"aristocrat" of pipes, the meerschaum is not
meant for the connoisseur alone. All pipe
smokers can appreciate the unique pleasure of
meerschaum.

SOME DO'S AND DON'TS FOR MEERSCHAUM SMOKERS *

Don't be afraid to handle or hold your
meerschaum with clean hands. Remember, you
purchased a meerschaum primarily for your
smoking pleasure. The "added" pleasure you
derive from a meerschaum is watching it colour
as you smoke it.

The conventional wisdom on this topic is that
handling a meerschaum while warm removes the
beeswax coating on the pipe, which highlights
its colouring. While this is true, only the
purist - the smoker far more concerned with the
look of his pipe than his own smoking pleasure -
need worry about it.

Do take care when removing the stem of your
meerschaum by pulling it and twisting it
CLOCKWISE while supporting the shank with the
fingers. Replace the stem by pushing it and
twisting it CLOCKWISE also. Twisting
counter-clockwise could unscrew the tenon, and
doing so repeatedly can strip out the shank. A
little care here will be repaid through a
lifetime of smoking pleasure.

Don't tap your meerschaum against a hard
surface. If you tap it in your palm, be sure to
support the shank firmly with your hand. This is
sound advice for briar pipe smokers also. To
empty a meerschaum, tip it upside down, and if
the ash doesn't fall out on its own use a pipe
tool gently to loosen it.

Don't let a cake develop in a meerschaum.
Therefore do not worry about "breaking in" your
meerschaum. Meerschaum pipes, unlike briars, do
not burn and hence need not be protected by a
carbon cake. Besides, the meerschaum is softer
than the cake and it may crack very easily,
since the cake expands with heat faster than the
meerschaum does. You can ream it out, but you've
got to be very careful in the process--the
reamer will remove meerschaum faster than cake,
so you've got to watch for spots where you've
reamed away the cake and stay away from those.

It is not recommended to use pipe sweeteners in
meerschaum pipes. The porous mineral will be
soaked with the sweetener causing it to lose its
functionality.

Do clean the cake or residue inside the bowl of
your meerschaum. Use a sharp-edged, blunt-ended
tool. Avoid digging into the heel of the pipe
when cleaning the graft hole by not allowing the
pipe cleaner (NOT liquid cleaner) to extend too
far into the bowl. Do not use alcohol to clean
the bowl of a meerschaum pipe. The meerschaum is
WET and SOFT in the heel immediately after a
smoke.

SUMMARY:-DO NOT
drop nor tap it to the hard surfaces
- DO NOT allow a cake to build in the bowl
- DO NOT twist the stem counter-clockwise
- DO NOT take the stem out of a pipe while it is
still hot- DO NOT use alcohol to clean
- DO NOT use pipe sweetener.